We are pleased to announce the Nordic Game Indie Sensation Award 2015, the 6th annual Nordic Indie Night Showcase. In collaboration with the Nordic Game Conference we will showcase a number of talented and interesting indie developers from the Nordic countries.

If you have a game that you feel deserves some more recognition, we invite you to submit your game to this years Nordic Game Indie Night. Last year’s showcase featured some awesome games, and we look forward to seeing your game this year.

If your team is based in the Nordic region: Denmark, Finland, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, or the Åland Islands you can submit your game here. You don’t have to be ethnically Nordic and having part of your team based in a Nordic country is enough to qualify.

This year, for the first time we will be judging board games as well as digital games. Board games will be judged by a separate dedicated jury. If you have a hybrid game please choose the category you would like to be judged in.

We will provide travel and accommodation for one member of each selected games development team. This will be so you can receive your award and showcase your game.

If you are nominated it is important that at least one member of your team is able to attend the Nordic Game event from 20th – 22nd May in Malmö, Sweden. Please refrain from submitting an application if you know you will not be able to attend the event.

Digital Games

A jury of game developers, theorists, past winners and members of the Copenhagen Game Collective will look through all the submissions to narrow them down to a shortlist of the projects that the jury finds to be most interesting. After that CphGC will curate the final nominees to be showcased at Nordic game. These games will then be in the running for receiving the Nordic Game Indie Sensation Award 2015.

We are primarily looking for new projects but games that have already been released are OK, as long as they came out within the last year or so. Prototypes, work-in-progress, unfinished and unreleased games are also welcome to submit, and will not be treated differently from finished or released games.

The games that are selected will not be intended to be a list of the “Best Nordic Indie Games” but will instead celebrate the diversity of interesting projects that are being developed in the Nordic region.

Board Games

A team of Nordic curators, led by Thomas Vigild and Astrid Mie Refstrup, will play, evaluate and nominate 6 prototypes. These will be separate from the digital game curators and will have expertise centered around the board game market

The selected prototypes will be put in a room at Slagthuset and available for playtesting from Wednesday morning. The game designers are responsible for manning and presenting their games. At the end of the evening at Nordic Indie Night everyone can vote for their favorite Nordic Indie Nordic Board Game on display. The board game with the highest number of votes wins the Nordic Board Game Indie Sensation award during the Award Ceremony on Wednesday evening.

Participation is free. The board game has to be unpublished in order to participate in the board game section of NBGIN.

The designers behind the selected prototypes nominated will all receive one full pass to Nordic Game Conference per board game.
We do not accept print & play board games. If your game is print & play, the curators still need the physical prototype.

The board game does not have to be a finished and superbly polished visual design, but it should be able to communicate the basic rules and mechanics. Only prototypes developed in the Nordic region will be accepted. The developer has to register and send the physical prototype of the board game to the curators for evaluation. Send the prototypes to the following address:

Astrid Mie Refstrup
Tøndebindervej 2, 2 th
2400 Copenhagen NW
Denmark

Unfortunately we do not reimburse or cover postal expenses or return the submitted prototypes.

Speed Pitch for Digital Games

As part of the “Investing in Games” track in the main conference program of Nordic Game 2015, a Speed Pitch event is being organised on 20th May. This gives Nordic developers a unique chance to pitch their new game projects to a selected group of global investors and publishers. Digital games submitted to Nordic Game Indie Night this year have the opportunity to also apply for this through the same submission form. This will not be judged by the Copenhagen Game Collective, instead your submission will be reviewed by the conference organisers, and If selected, you will get a free entrance pass for the conference as well as support on how to prepare for the Speed Pitch event.

Copenhagen Game Collective is dedicated to fostering a safe-space environment at all our events: this means creating a space where all people, of any orientation, gender identity, and race, are respected, accepted and welcome. Harassment is not tolerated.

We have started the preparations for the Nordic Game Pre-party and this is one of the very first things we want to get in place: announcing of our Safer Space Policy. It is now official and will from now on be executed and can be referred to in all events we are responsible for.

The Safer Space Policy is here because we want to make sure that you know that if something or someone makes you feel uncomfortable at one of our events, no matter how minor it seems, you are encouraged to report it to us.

Copenhagen Game Collective works voluntarily to create an inspiring and cultivating environment of experimental and diverse game making. Every event we make is an effort in creating a space for experimental makers, players, critics and thinkers to meet, discuss and find inspiration. And every event we make is an invitation to new people to get involved because we believe that game creation is a social activity. In this social space diversity and difference is key. Every weird experiment, every new perspective and every unique contribution enriches our medium. Games are excellent platforms for individual expressivity, – humour, joy, stories, fear and hopes, weirdness, silliness and anger – and it ought to be a platform for everyone.

Although we are lucky and proud of the vibrant scene of experimental game making in and around Copenhagen we know we can do better. Situated in the Danish and Scandinavian culture we tend to deal with social problems in discrete and informal ways. We do appreciate the trust this signals, however, incidents of harassment and participants feeling uncomfortable at game events is a call for a more formal procedure. We actively want to reach more diverse audiences than the typical white male gamer maker and we want those audiences to feel safe and welcome. We believe an effort to create a safer space is a good first step.

We need your help to make this happen
1. We would like to hear from you, our guests and participants at previous events. If you have experienced anything that made you feel uncomfortable, or if you have any suggestions to what would make Copenhagen Game Collective run safer events please fill out this form: http://bit.ly/15BE45k – we hope feedback from you will continuously help us improve policies and attitudes that make everybody feel welcome.
2. While we hope to form the best policy based on feedback from you, we don’t want to wait. We will from now on have our best shot at a Safer Space Policy publicized at our website (at the bottom of this blog post), we will make sure to direct attention to this policy in our communication about events, and we will take steps to internally educate all volunteers at the Collective about these policies so they know what steps to take in any given situation.

Game culture has for years been charged with sexism, racism, discrimination and harassment of various kinds. Members of the Collective are dealing with this on a regular basis and we have no reason to believe that this is any different for the guests at our events. Although we cannot guarantee a space free of discrimination and harassment, we officially encourage everyone to change this together. Please speak up if you experience any form of discrimination or harassment – whether this is targeted at yourself or someone else. Please join us to enforce the Safer Space Policy!

If a guest engages in harassing behavior, Collective members may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from our events. No refunds will be offered in the case of expulsion from a paid event.
Attendance at Copenhagen Game Collective events implies that the participants agree to, and will abide by, these rules.
If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a Safer Space Ambassador, recognizable by a Safer Space button, see image.

Safer Space Ambassadors are ready to help out in any possible way, e.g. contacting venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the events.

Whilst we would like to feel that we offer an environment in which you can voice concerns about incidents as and when they happen we also welcome you to reach out to us to inform us of past harassment or incidents related to our events which made you feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

We believe people should feel safe in reporting issues of harassment. When contacting collective members, by word or mail, your reports will stay anonymous unless otherwise stated. Your privacy is of utmost importance.
We can be reached at: info@cphgc.org
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The text for this policy is adapted from http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment

Friend of the Collective Anders Monrad will shortly be releasing his app Virtuoso for the iPhone. Virtuoso is a gestural music app with unusually (for a phone app) deep sound generation possibilities. The app is curated by Haandholdt. It is also delightfully dance-like in use.

On this coming Thursday at five, Nikolaj Kunsthal is hosting a release event. Here, you’ll be able to hear the app in concert, and listen to Monrad in an artist talk with – and this is quite a scoop – composer Fuzzy, Danish electronic music-grand old man.

We are excited to announce that we are co-organizing Alt Ctrl Game Jam, an online game jam about experimenting with game controls. The jam will be happening from Sep. 12th – Sep. 22nd. It is a 10 day jam with a goal to inspire the use of alternative controls in games.

So take out the duct tape, soldering iron, some spare parts, a development board (like the arduino), old controller shells you have laying around, and make the ultimate controller for your game.
If you don’t feel like you’re too good with gluing things together, soldering etc, you can get creative with the things you already have: Kinect, PS move, Wii Remotes, brain scanners, etc.

The jam is online and everyone can participate, but we have also worked on setting up a few physical locations for jammers. We have two confirmed locations: Skopje in Macedonia and Aarhus in Denmark. More details and specifications for the physical locations are coming soon.

We also encourage supporters from all over the world to organize and setup local hubs for the jam. If you do so please write to us at info@cphgc.org and we will announce your location.

For more details regarding the game jam, participation, voting, awards… check out the official Alt Ctrl Game Jam page.

Thinking back at Lyst now, I can’t say anything else than it was really amazing. I can’t think of one thing that was not great! On so many levels: Speakers, food, people, games… It was the first time for someone from Copenhagen Game Collective and Game Girl Workshop to come together and organize something like this, and we were quite nervous. Especially taking the topics into account: Romance, love and sex in games. It felt like so many things could go wrong, on so many levels.

Patrick Jarnfelt from CphGC and I, Andrea Hasselager from Game Girl Workshop first started collaborating on the iPad game Moontide (still in production), an abstract game that emotionally follows the female cycle. We quickly found out that we were a dynamic duo, and when Patrick told me about the idea that had been circulating around Copenhagen Game Collective for a while: A game jam about relationships emotions, and sex, I was like ’Let’s do it!’ CGC had been a bit hesitant about doing it, because of it being sensitive topics and stepping into the (important) and ongoing discussions in the games industry, right now. I guess our conclusion was: Yea, we will probably make mistakes, but if you don’t start somewhere, you will never start. Read more »

The audience favorite at the 5th Nordic Game Indie Night during the 10th Nordic Game Conference was Among the sleep, by Krillbite. Thanks to all participants, nominees, the winners and everybody who voted, as well as Nordic Game for having us. And thank you for attending the Nordic Game Indie Night live, and supporting us in experimenting with talks, giving the stage to projects and people that we think deserve the spotlight.Read more »

It is time to reveal our secret external jury for NGIN 2014, which included past Indie Night finalist and winners as well as game thinkers and critics. Their task was to play and evaluate the submitted games by commenting and voting. The core members of the collective are also participating in the evaluation process of the games, you can see the CPHGC core members here.
The final step of selecting the eight finalist games is done by the core CGC members. The process includes meetings and discussion about each submitted game, while also considering the game evaluations and votes by the jury, and creating a short lists of potential finalists.

Choosing the final eight nominees is never easy since there are so many good games that are developed in the Nordic region every year. Our main intention is to curate an exhibition and competition that represents a healthy diversity in geography, scope, budgets, target demographics, development methods, company structures, design sensibility, genre (or not), aesthetic goals and artistic intent. We hope you enjoy our selection of games this year

And now finally here is an introduction to our incredible external jury that helped us in finding the “The Eight Best Nordic Indie Games” that will be shown at NGIN 2014, from 18.00 at Slagthuset, Malmö (Read more about the finalist games here).

Whew! This year the Nordic Indie Sensation had almost a hundred game submissions. The jury included CPHGC members, past winners as well as game thinkers and critics; their task has been to evaluate each entrant on its own merits. When selecting for a category as nebulous as “Indie Sensation”, even without taking the diversity of submitted games into account, that has been a challenge. An exciting one.

Just like every year, we have no intention of promoting our shortlist as “The Eight Best Nordic Indie Games”. We have instead tried to celebrate the diversity that we found in the submissions – you’ll find larger and smaller projects, made by newly established as well as experienced studios, released and in development. In this competition, we are not looking for what is on top of the ladder, rather we go digging for the creamy filling which sits at the core of exactly what Nordic indie games are to us. Common to all of them is that they have a hearty experimental core, that they try for something out of the ordinary, be it a novel aestethic, a twist on an old mechanic, a fresh narrative, or are just so plain well-tuned that they bowled us over.

They all do what they set out to do, and they do it well. Common to all of them is that they are worth showcasing and celebrating.

Now, as for the submissions that didn’t make the nominees list, we have no doubts that we’ll see quite a few of the teams or games in the regular Nordic Game Awards in the years to come. Time may yet prove that we missed some real sensations – but we’ll gladly be proven wrong.

As the dust is settling, it’s obvious to us that Nordic indie games are alive and well, and that there exists a healthy diversity in geography, scope, budgets, target demographics, development methods and company structures. Not to mention stuff like game design sensibility, genre (or not), aesthetic goals and artistic intent.

The eight selected games will be showcased Wednesday May 21st from 18.00 at Slagthuset, Malmö. One of the games will be selected by public voting during the night to receive the “Indie Sensation Award” at the Nordic Game Awards May 22nd. The evening is free and open to the public and will features inspirational and experimental speakers. We will release more information about the program for the evening in the following weeks, stay tuned.